Baroque composers

Events

Jacopo Peri

20th August 1561 - 13th August 1633

He was an Italian composer and singer from the period of transition between the Renaissance and the Baroque, and is considered the inventor of the opera. Composed the first opera that is conserved: Eurydice (1600).

Claudio Monteverdi

15th May 1567 - 29th November 1643

He was an Italian composer, gambista and singer. It marked the transition between the polyphonic and madrigalist tradition of the sixteenth century and the birth of opera and lyrical drama in the seventeenth century. He is the most important figure in the transition between Renaissance and Baroque music.

Michael Praetorius

15th February 1571 - 15th February 1621

Was a German composer and organist. He was one of the most versatile composers of his time and influenced the development of forms based on Protestant hymns.

Lepanto's Battle

1575

Gregorio Allergri

Approx. 1582 - 17th February 1652

Was an Italian priest, singer and composer.He began musically as a child soprano in Rome, in the church of San Luigi dei Francesi under the mast of the chapel Giovanni Bernardino Nanino from 1591 to 1596, in which his voice changed.

Girolamo Frescobaldi

13th September 1583 - 1st March 1643

Italian musician of the baroque period.He wrote a great number of works for organ and harpsichord, including tocatas, whims, fantasies, songs, ricercare (generic name for any piece with counterpoint), dances and variations.

Francisco Correa de Araujo

17th September 1584 - Approx. 1654

Was one of the most important Andalusian composers and organists of the period of transition between the Renaissance and the Baroque.

Shakespeare - Hamlet

1603

Cervantes – D. Quijote

1605

Jean Baptiste Lully

28th November 1632 - 22nd March 1687

Was a composer, instrumentalist and French dancer of Italian origin, creator of the French opera that consisted of a complex staging that incorporated opera with French aesthetic, in addition to ballet and deep literary texts to which he baptized like "Musical tragedies".

Calderón de la Barca – La vida es sueño

1635

Gaspar Sanz

4th April 1640 - Approx. 1710

Was a composer, guitarist and organist of the Spanish Baroque. He studied music, theology and philosophy at the University of Salamanca, where he was later appointed professor of music. He wrote three books of pedagogy and works for baroque guitar that form an important part of the current repertoire of classical guitar according to the best musicians on guitar techniques.

Marc Antoine Charpentier

Approx. 1643 - 24th February 1704

Was a composer of the French Baroque.He was a non-profit and versatile composer, producing music of the highest quality in different genres. The mastery of his composition in vocal religious music was recognized by his contemporaries.

Juan Cabanilles

6th September 1644 - 29th April 1712

Was an organist and Spanish composer of baroque music.

Arcangelo Corelli

17th February 1653 - 8th January 1713

Was a violinist and composer of the Italian Baroque period.In 1682 he became the first violinist in the chapel orchestra of the church of St. Louis of the French, the national church of the French community in Rome.

Velázquez - Las Meninas

1656

Marin Marais

31st May 1656 - 15th August 1728

Was a violagambista and French composer, disciple of Jean-Baptiste Lully and of Monsieur de Sainte-Colombe. In 1676 he was hired as a musician at the court of Louis XIV of France. He excelled in that post, and in 1679 he was appointed ordinaire de la chambre du roi pour la viole, a title he kept until 1725.

Henry Purcell

Approx. 1659 - 21st November 1695

Was a British composer of the Baroque. Considered one of the best English composers of all time, he incorporated French and Italian stylistic elements into his music, generating an English style of Baroque music.

François Couperin

10th November 1668 - 11th September 1733

Composer, organist and French harpsichordist of the Baroque. He is one of the most important composers, along with Jean-Philippe Rameau, of French baroque music in general and music for key in particular. He is called Couperin le Grand (Couperin the Great) to distinguish him from other members of his family, also musicians. He is the most outstanding of them all, for his immense virtuosity to the organ and the key.

Antonio Vivaldi

4th March 1678 - 28th July 1741

Was a Venetian composer, violinist, impresario, teacher and Venetian baroque priest. He was nicknamed Il prete rosso ("The Red Priest") for being a priest and a redhead. It is one of the most relevant figures in the history of music. His mastery is reflected in having cemented the genre of the concert, the most important of his time.

Georg Philip Telemann

14th March 1681 - 25th June 1767

Was a German Baroque composer, although his work also had characteristics of principles of classicism. He is considered the most prolific composer in the history of music.

Jean Philippe Rameau

25th September 1683 - 12th September 1764

Was a composer, harpsichrist and French musical theorist, very influential in the Baroque period. He replaced Jean-Baptiste Lully as the dominant composer of the French opera and was severely attacked by those who preferred the style of his predecessor. He died in 1764, barely a month before another great French musician, Jean-Marie Leclair, was killed.

Georg Friedrich Händel

Approx. 1685 - 14th April 1759

Was a German composer, later nationalized English, considered one of the top figures of Baroque music and one of the most influential composers of Western and universal music. In the history of music, he is the first modern composer to have adapted and focused his music to satisfy the tastes and needs of the public, instead of those of the nobility and patrons, as was usual.

Johan Sabastian Bach

Approx. 1685 - 28th July 1750

Was a composer, organist, harpsichordist, violinist, violist, chapelmaster and German kantor of the baroque period. He was the most important member of one of the most outstanding musical families in history, with more than 35 famous composers. He had a great reputation as organist and harpsichordist throughout Europe for his great technique and ability to improvise music to the keyboard. Besides the organ and the harpsichord, he played the violin and the viola da gamba.

Domenico Scarlatti

26th October 1685 - 23rd July 1757

Was an Italian composer of the baroque period settled in Spain, where he composed almost all his sonatas for harpsichord, for which he is universally recognized. His style evolved into the preclassic.

Padre Soler

3rd December 1729 - 20th December 1783

Was a composer and Spanish harpsichordist, representative of the Spanish school of keyboard music of the eighteenth century, and follower of the musical stream introduced in Spain by the Italian Domenico Scarlatti.